I thought I might post occasionally and describe a bit of my kit building experience.

My Genesis Q5 30M transmitter kit showed up a few days ago. I felt it prudent to start small, hence the Q5. I'm the only one home at the moment so I thought this would be a good opportunity to get started on it.

I have a new soldering iron on order, FedEx claims it will be here tomorrow. I dug out my trusty old Radio Shack 40W pencil iron in the meantime. The first thing I did was find some fine grit sandpaper and scoured up the tip. Then with flux and 60/40 rosin core solder in hand I tinned it.

Next I gave the enclosed destructions the once over and decided that I'd start with something simple. I soldered the key jack in place. Not bad, but there was room for improvement. Next I decided I'd start placing all the capacitors. There were supposed to be 2 electrolytic caps in the kit but it seems that only one made the journey from Australia. No problem, I can either get one at Radio Shack (the one near me still has a parts bin) or I'll order some online. I moved on to the next batch of capacitors and started soldering all the 100 nF caps marked 104. So far things were going swimmingly. I must have looked a sight hunched over my bench, magnifying visor in place, solder smoke wafting in the air. My solder joints now were starting to look much better as my technique improved. As a side note, no one ever taught me how to solder, I just got an iron one day when I was a kid and figured it out on my own. I'm cringing now in hindsight. I spent some time watching some tutorial videos on YouTube and it has made a difference.

Now I've got all the '104' caps in place, it was time to move on to C5, a 10nF cap. Hmmmm....don't tell me I'm missing that one too. As a matter of paranoia, flipped the visor lens down and took a good look at the board...opps. There it is, where one of the 104's should be. Crud, no desoldering wick! Add that to the shopping list.

This was the point that I decided that my eyes were bugging me and I needed to take a break. So here I sit, a glass of rum an orange juice in hand, telling my tale. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.